Same old story.

Today I get from work 1gb ddr-800 ram to experiment wether 2gb dual channel (1+1)is better from 3gb single channel (1+1+1).
I run 3d mark 2006 with following results:2gb(9785),3gb(9825).
Comp spec5N-E SLI n-force 650
Core 2 Duo E6750-2.66ghz
Galaxy 9600GT 512mb
WD 320gb s-ata,7200,16mb
Cooler Master Extreme 460w


I run this exp. cos on internet I saw many forums were they say that 2gb is better than 3gb,quoting one of the forum:It's like heavy truck(3gb) to be better than Ferrari(2gb).
I really want your opinion about this matter,cos I want to upgrade with this one gig of ram.
What do you think?

 

If you have a modern motherboard, at least from what I understand, the first pair of memory modules will be dual channel, and the last one on it's own will be single channel.

 

No, cos when you put the third ram you will lose the dual channel.With CPUZ I have 2gb in dual channel,but with 3gb goes back to single.

 

Whoops! Sorry, just goes to show how much some of us still have to learn really...:-o

 

C'mon,man when I start to hangin around in this forum I even don't know what is ram or processor:-D:-D...graphic gard for me was SCI-Firoflmao
So be cool cos nobody was born with knowledge about comp's.:wave:major

So guys and gals what do you think about this myth?
Today I was running sisoft sandra and on overall benchmark gave me 319pts for 2gb and 297 for 3gb.

 

Dual channel architecture gives increase speed of access over single channel

to what is in RAM memory.

This is the key statement because it must be in the memory to utilise the increased speed of access.

Your PC has three main levels of working memory, plus storage which contains stuff the pc is not actually working on but has access to if needed.

The levels are, in order of importance (speed etc) and use

Processor Cache > RAM >> Virtual Memory

The processor uses first its own registers (cache) and supplements this with RAM when necessary. Since cache is faster than RAM, the speed here is limited by the RAM and so dual channeling will make a significant difference, compared to the amount of RAM.

Modern applications programs create many processes or threads going on simultaneously so it becomes necessary to swap out entire sections of RAM to VM to allow for this. VM is significantly slower than RAM so the speed here is limited by the VM and unaffected by RAM speed. However the more RAM you have the less the need to invoke VM - RAM transfers.

So you can see that the memory strategy depends upon your intended use.

If you are going to keep lots of applications open at the same time, or perhaps applications with lots of levels of undo such as drawing programs, you cannot have to large a RAM size.

If you are going to use applications which do lots of small calculations and then move on, discarding the previous material, eg video playback, then dual channel is better.

Of course in real life, most users have some mix of both types of applications so judgement is necessary to achieve the best balance.

 

THanks guys for the replyes you wrote.So,for now I willstick with 2gb in dual,and will wait vista x64 to be better with drivers cos I've heard a lot of complaining about lacking with drivers in x64..or maybe I was wrong....
Studiot maybe you know something about this problem.

 

Once again it depends on your applications,

Games 'push the envelope' and have done so since before the first personal computers.

So if you do a lot of gaming you can expect problems.

Equally, specialist programs like Autocad, finite element analysis, typesetting etc lag hardware/OS developments so tend to be 'platform specific' and users find problems on newer systems. This applies to Mac as well as PC.